This book is a micro-level study of rural poverty alleviation programmes in a rich state of India, Haryana. Paradoxically, the state is rich with high per capita income, but the conditions of poor people in rural areas is miserable. This book endeavours to find out the political economy of short-comings and bottle-necks in the administrative structure of anti-rural poverty alleviation programmes, such as IRDP. It makes suggestions and recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of these programmes towards achieving their goals. Chopra, Parvesh K. PhD (England), PhD (India), M. Phil. (Economics), PG D. Statistics, M.A (Economics), B.A. (Honours), is currently a Senior Research Economist for the Centre for the Study of Human Development, Leeds, England (UK). He has taught Economics at different levels for many years before joining the Department of Economics, School of Business Studies, The University of Leeds, England as a Doctoral Researcher. He was awarded his second PhD from the University of Leeds, England. He has published research papers extensively in refereed international journals of repute and has authored singly or jointly more than 12 research books. His recent research book Poverty As Human Contestability Failure was published in the year 2007. Dr. Chopra research has ranged over a number of areas including poverty and inequality, gender issues human resource development, economics of pharmaceutical products, rural development, globalization and health economics. Dr. Chopra is actively associated with the International Journal of Human Development as its Managing Editor and is a member of the Royal Economic Society (UK).